Q: Riverside’s William Anderson disputes an answer given in a prior column to a reader who asked about right-of-way where traffic is entering a freeway.

California Highway Patrol Lt. Michael Soubirous had answered that neither a driver on the freeway nor the driver merging onto the freeway has right-of-way and that both parties have to “work it out” so traffic merges seamlessly into a single lane.

“According to the California Department of Motor Vehicles Handbook,” Anderson wrote, ” … it clearly states that the freeway traffic has the right of way.”

A: Anderson is correct that the handbook tells drivers that traffic already on the freeway has the right-of-way over vehicles entering from the on-ramp (it’s on page 53 of the 2010 handbook).

Responding to Anderson’s comment, Soubirous said, “That is DMV’s opinion only, and there is no vehicle code section basis for this opinion.”

The state vehicle code documents the actual laws the CHP enforces.

“If a collision occurred while the ‘merge’ was happening between two vehicles,” Soubirous wrote, “law enforcement would not refer to the driver’s handbook. We would refer to the vehicle code to find collision ‘fault,’ which often has court-tested case law to back it up.”

Soubirous acknowledges that this topic has been the subject of debate before.

In the past he’s discussed it with leaders at the CHP Academy and CHP headquarters to get a consensus on the question. He also recounted a conversation with CHP and DMV officials in Sacramento.

The DMV leaders said they based the handbook’s opinion of freeway right-of way on vehicle code section 21804(a), which deals with entry onto a highway. But, as Soubirous noted, in the code’s parlance, “highway” doesn’t mean “freeway,” it means any kind of road — local streets included.

Section 21804(a) deals with entry onto a roadway from public or private property or an alley, he said. Typically the section is used when somebody enters the road from a parking lot, Soubirous said.

But in the case of a freeway on-ramp, “the moment you enter the ramp, you’re on a ‘highway’ already,” the lieutenant said. The ramp is, in effect, its own freeway lane, which in turn merges with the rightmost one at the end of the ramp, he said. So, the handbook’s reliance on this section for the freeway-merge opinion is shaky, Soubirous said.

Like the driver handbook, the vehicle code is published by the DMV, Soubirous added. But the code sets forth the law, while the handbook is “general across-the-board opinion on safe driving practices,” he said, adding that the two don’t always perfectly agree, he said.

“Professionally, I would recommend drivers follow the vehicle code,” he said.

In this case, the code doesn’t spell out explicitly what drivers should do when entering a freeway, but because the move is considered a merge — not a case of one lane “yielding” to another, which is legally different — drivers in this situation should use common sense to let traffic blend into a single lane safely.